July 15, 2015

V and W are two letters and sounds that are clearly distinguished in American English. V and W are often not distinguishable in many Indian languages, with one letter/sound that almost combines the two English sounds into one. The image to the left shows the v/w symbol in most major Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil. Malayalam, Bengali and others. Because of this, when many Indians speak English with American (or other Western) native English speakers, the native speakers are not able to hear the pronunciation clearly. This post will provide some tips to help reduce the Mother Tongue Influence (MTI) regarding these important sounds. Some examples are: When saying “vest”, “van”, or other words starting with a “v”, the v sounds like a w. Sometimes, the Western speaker cannot identify the word even within the context of the sentence. What does a native English speaker hear?When the v comes in the middle of a word, the v often sounds like a w or as though it's absent. For example:

See the photo above for the next lesson.Stove becomes stow (another word in English) or stovvah (with Malayalam accent)The photo below says "gas stove" in Malayalam, but actually transliterated says "gyaas stou" which sounds to an American like "gas stow." Stow is an English word, and so is stove. In some cases, stove can also be written in Malayalam with a double v. All of these spellings are transliterations of English into Malayalam (so yes, below, for those who can't read Malayalam it actually says "gas stove" in English!).

See the red highlighted portion of the photo above for one more exampleThe Malayalam here again is actually English words transliterated into Malayalam. It says 'veggie wash'. Note, that in English veggie starts with a v and wash starts with a w, but since Malayalam (and many Indian languages) use the same letter to represent v and w, veggie and wash actually start with the same first letter - വ. Due to this, we need to improve the enunciation between these two sounds when speaking in English to reduce the MTI influence.

Cultural note- if you are in the US in a Subway and want to order a veggie sandwich. Instead, ask for a vegetarian sub. Why? Veggie is not a word typically used in the U.S., and also since the v may sound like a w to an American, you may get funny looks when asking for a 'weggie sandwich' which will sound like a 'wedgie sandwich.' (Wedgie is a slang meaning pants caught in the behind!)

We can see that sometimes when the sound changes, the native English speaker hears a totally different word (mower for mover, stow for stove) or a non-existent word (mooer or stovvah).Let’s learn some techniques to say and spell these two letters correctly.Below the written tips are a few video tutorials from other tutors. To understand if you are creating the right sounds, ask an American or Western English speaker to listen and critique you. People also hire me to teach them how to make and refine these sounds.

*Test vibration with one of these two tricks; place one hand on your neck to feel the vibration or place both hands over your ears to feel a vibration and an echo in your head. Test lip position two ways: